


Expectations

by breakingoftheshell



Category: Battle Creek (TV)
Genre: First Kiss, M/M, Psychotropic Drugs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-15
Updated: 2015-04-15
Packaged: 2018-03-23 02:24:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3750922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/breakingoftheshell/pseuds/breakingoftheshell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Russ has been waiting for Milt to embarrass himself since the moment the FBI agent stepped his shiny ass into Battle Creek, but when he does, Russ doesn't react quite the way anyone, himself included, expects.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Expectations

**Author's Note:**

> This is a wonky one shot to try to exorcise Battle Creek from my brain. It is not beta read. In fact, I finished it two seconds ago, so it's not even... uh... read. I'll read it tomorrow and be just as surprised as everyone else. Haha.

Russ liked to think he'd reached a kind of equilibrium with the whole Milt situation. Sure, he might not ever  _like_ Monaco, but he'd taken a few steps back from actually considering him the spawn of hell. For one thing, Milt was just straight up too pretty to be the devil, but mostly, no matter what he did to end up in Battle Creek, Milton Chamberlain was distressingly _helpful_. Whatever he was running from, or being punished for, it wasn't the obstruction of day to day shit. That didn't mean Russ didn't intend to find out what Milt's story really was, but in the meantime, the FBI Agent occasionally brought useful things to a case. Usually it was just crap, you know, booties and shit, but the Escalade was a hell of a lot more comfortable than Russ's POS, not that he would ever admit that out loud. It would be better if Milt let him drive, but Russ knew he probably wasn't technically insured on the FBIs policy. 

Which would be why he'd driven his own piece of shit back to HQ. He really might've just left it at the crime scene if the thought of Milt chauffeuring him around hadn't grated far too much. Milt and the goddamn truck even smelled perfect--detailed. Not like coffee and ketchup. But half the time, Russ's car didn't give him a choice, so when it started, he figured he better go with it. He had his pride. Shit, at this point, it was almost all he had left. So he was back in the swarming bullpen, and he almost tripped over Jacocks on the way to his desk.

"Where's Milt?" she asked as he cocked a hip to swerve around her.

"Fuck if I know," Russ answered.

"Come on," she said. "We need him for the--"

"Hey, I'm not his babysitter," Russ said, stalking past his desk to the coffee.

"He picked  _you_ , Russ," Jacocks huffed.

Russ turned back to her, swirling his coffee around in his cup, hoping to make it look less separated. Anything that happened after dark was a bitch. When he lifted his head, Jacocks had her arms crossed at him and one heel dug into the floor at an angle, like she was really planning on tripping him now. Russ rolled his eyes, sipped some coffee, suppressed a cough out of long practice, and sat on the edge of his own desk. He dug his phone out of his pocket, dialed Milt, and waited. Nothing happened for just long enough for Russ to remember, then he scoffed, set his coffee down, and pressed the speaker button. Earpiece on the phone hadn't been working right since Tuesday. 

The ringtone chirred out across the bullpen as Font settled into his chair to Russ's left, and everyone else hushed down just a little so Russ would be able to hear his call. Russ scowled at his phone. He hoped Milt fucked up, forgot Russ's phone only worked on speaker, and said something embarrassing, but then he was Milt and perfect, and that would never happen. Even in private, he was polite. Smooth. Flawless.

"Russ," Milt answered, breathless.

"Yeah, man. Where are you?" Russ asked, holding his phone up in front of himself like it was a tiny drink tray.

"Had to come home. Had an accident," Milt answered, still winded.

The bullpen, already slowed and attentive, stopped. Russ looked up, across the room, at Holly, like he needed her wide eyed stare to confirm that everyone else had heard what he'd just heard. Something stirred in his stomach--something that felt suspiciously like excitement.

"I'm sorry, what?" he asked.

"I tried to stop it," Milt moaned. "I couldn't. In the truck..."

Russ felt the smirk that wanted to break across his face--knew it was going to be ugly. He tried to hold onto it, for the sake of propriety. 

" _Russell_ ," Milt whispered.

And everything stopped. It wasn't the way that everything had stopped a few seconds before. That was just comic pause, papers falling still, keys no longer clicking, murmurs hushing. This was a different kind of stop. This one happened in Russ's head--in his chest. It was the instinctive paralyzation that happened when he realized something was really fucking wrong. 

"Russell, I need you," Milt whispered.

"What?" Russ heard himself ask. He started to stand from his desk, felt like maybe a molasses cartel had got hold of him. 

"Russ,  _please_. I did it once, once already, but I need you to make me come.  _Come and come and come_." 

Whatever equilibrium Russ thought he had was gone. He fell back the couple of inches he'd made it off his desk. His vision went dark at the edges and all he could hear was the sound of Milt breathing, hard, somewhere on the other side of town.

"Something in me," Milt moaned. "God, it's so... I need _more_ , Russell. I need  _you_. Fuck it out of me."

Someone gasped. Someone maybe even snickered. Russ looked around dizzily and was aware of Niblet biting his lower lip and Jacocks standing there with her mouth open. 

Then Milt said softly, one more time, " _Please_."

" _Goddammit_!" Russ roared, leaping up from the desk. "Someone call a bus.  _Now!_ " 

Funkhauser actually rolled backward in his chair. 

"Where are you, Milt? You're home?" Russ demanded of the phone.

"Yeah. Made it home. Made it home." Milt sounded like he was fading.

"Do not move, Agent Chamberlain, do you hear me?" Russ shouted.

Holly had gathered herself enough to get on the line to dispatch. Jacocks had sprinted off to alert Guziewicz. Font, Niblet, and Funkhauser seemed to be waiting for Russ's command. They still looked confused.

"Help me, Russ," Milt pleaded.

"Jesus Christ," Russ said, starting for the door. "I'm coming. Don't move."

"Bus is on its way to him, Russ," Holly called, wringing her hands.

"Russ!" Font said, darting after him. 

Russ turned before he hit the doors. "Get hazmat back to that scene, no one in or out without precautions, isolate all the evidence, and for fuck's sake, find out what the fuck got into his system!"

Russ could see Niblet and Funk nodding like terrified bobbleheads, then he and Font were out the door, into Font's car and tearing down the street. Russ couldn't take the time to test out his piece of shit right now, and he could tell, once he took a breath in the car and noticed the way Font was looking at him, that his partner wouldn't have been about to let him drive anyway. He'd examine later why everyone seemed to think he was overreacting, but for the moment, he was more concerned about whatever mindfuck Milt was going through. 

"Jesus, that was not okay," Russ said aloud.

"Russ, it wasn't... I mean, at first, I thought he just..."

"What, just what? That sounded okay to you?"

"No, not now, but I mean, until you panicked, I just thought it was a mistake. Like, you know, he didn't know we could hear him."

"Something is really wrong with him, man."

"I know, I'm just saying."

"I get it. It was easy for you all to make the deductive leap that Milt and I are grudge fucking or something. Drive faster."

"We're not going to beat the bus."

"Yeah, but they'll still be there."

And they were. The lights were flashing outside the warehouse when Font slid to a sideways stop. Russ launched out of the car and into the building. The EMTs already had Milt on the gurney and were wheeling him back down the hall. His eyes were rolled back in his head, his face flushed a hectic red, sweat soaked through the sheet wrapped around him. Russ skidded along next to the gurney.

"We don't know what it is yet," he told the EMTs.

"Neither do we. Got an elevated heart rate, BP, body temperature. We'll know more at the hospital," one of the EMTs replied.

He didn't say anything, just worked around Russ when Russ climbed into the back of the ambulance with them. Milt seemed to start to come around, his eyes blinking open, pupils contracting under the cabin lights.

"Hey, hey," Russ said, leaning forward. He was only dimly aware of the sirens and the lights, both from the ambulance and from Font's car, following them to the hospital.

Milt looked up at him, parted his lips and smiled. He strained a little, weakly, against the gurney restraints, like he was trying to roll toward Russ, and Russ put a hand on his shoulder even though Milt couldn't go anywhere. He just pushed a little, trying to be reassuring. Milt moaned, low and warm. He started to turn his head, mouth open, toward Russ's hand, and Russ carefully drew his hand back. One of the EMTs gave Russ an evaluating look.

"That ain't normal," Russ said, to be clear. 

The EMT nodded, and Russ resisted the urge to roll his eyes, because he thought he almost saw a smile there too. Jesus, just because Milt was gorgeous and begging for it, everyone thought... Russ scoffed. 

"You're a dick," Russ told Milt. "Even completely helpless, you are still, somehow, a dick."

" _Russell_ ," Milt moaned.

"Would you _stop_ that?" Russ said then dug in his pocket for his ringing phone. "Yeah!"

"Hey, we found aerosolized nastiness at the scene," Funkhauser said. "Sent some to the lab and some to the hospital."

"Good. I mean, nasty, but good," Russ said.

"Right. Full precautions, man. So, uh..."

Milt shuddered and cringed, and Russ instinctively reached out to pat comfortingly at him. He aimed for what had to be Milt's arm, swaddled safely down against his body, but when he touched it, Milt let out a loud, filthy moan. Russ snatched his hand back. So did the EMTs for that matter.

"Whoa. Was that him?" Funkhauser asked.

"Yeah, holy shit, man, do not mess around with that shit," Russ said.

"He don't sound like he's hurtin'," Funk said.

"You think you're funny, man?" Russ said. He reached over and smacked the EMT who was hesitating to put hands back on Milt. "He looks like he's about to explode."

"Uh..."

"No, man, I mean, like, regular blood and guts and brains. This shit is frying him. Figure it out." Russ hung up the phone.

Milt's eyes rolled backward again and no matter how much Russ said  _hey_ , Milt didn't come back out of it, all the way into an ER suite. A care team swarmed him then, and Russ finally backed off. Font showed up at his elbow and towed him back to the lobby, and then set them to the task of hounding lab techs for answers on the aerosol from the scene. The ecstasy was no surprise, but it'd been whipped together with some other things into one hell of a cocktail, and then, basically weaponized. That probably hadn't been the intent, but maybe that's where this whole case had become a clusterfuck, and that's how they'd ended up with the first body. The fancy chemical shit was usually reserved for bigger cities, but hey. Maybe Battle Creek was moving up. 

Russ scoffed as he thought about it the next afternoon, slouched in a chair in Milt's hospital room while Milt finished sleeping it off. Russ had slept, early in the morning, after Milt stabilized, and BCPD was having a field day using all of Milt's shit without Milt's supervision. Milt would probably shit when he realized someone had let Niblet loose on the mass spec. It was sort of a satisfying image--the bullpen emptied out into Milt's office like an overturned shoebox of receipts. Font and Funkhauser would be using the display for all kinds of stuff--fingerprints on everything. Russ had been pretty unambiguous when he'd said that there were no other cases until they figured this shit out. 

None of that was anywhere near as satisfying as it had been to see Milt's breathing ease out earlier in the day though--to watch his stats gradually return to normal. Russ just didn't think it was okay to, ya know, break Milt Chamberlain. It would be like breaking a Ming vase or something. He'd had to know it hadn't happened on his watch. Perfect Milt was still perfect. 

And he was. He was all cheekbones and dark hair falling over a perfectly tanned forehead. He'd spent the whole night spazzing out, and his hair, while not up to his usual Ken doll standard, was merely fashionably tousled. His eyebrows were painted over his closed eyes in artful sweeps, and even his mouth was neat, closed in sleep, his lower lip just a little plump and bitten from the long night. 

"You're not even real," Russ said from his chair next to the bed. 

Milt stirred, blew out a little sigh, and scrunched up his adorable brow. Russ, disgusted with himself, reached over to the table and swallowed the last of his cup of ice chips. Swallowing the ice whole helped clear his head a little, and he felt a little more prepared when he turned back to Milt, who was blinking his eyes open. Blinking and blinking, with long lashes in what shouldn't have been flattering hospital light. Seriously. Fuck this guy.

"Hey, Monaco," Russ heard himself say.

Milt focused on him. Winced a little. Ground out, "I'm so sorry, Russ."

Russ handed him a cup of water. Milt sipped neatly through the straw. Russ grinned at him when he was done.

"Take it your memory wasn't affected any," he said.

"I wish it was," Milt said. "That... now that... was some embarrassing shit. Pardon my language."

Russ laughed. Really laughed. Milt rolled his eyes but managed to look fittingly pathetic, like he knew he deserved it. When Russ kept giggling though, he threw his hands in the air and then chucked his empty water cup at Russ's head. 

"When you're under control, I need to pee. And my mouth tastes horrible," Milt grumbled.

Russ nudged his chair out of the way, still grinning, and gave Milt a hand up. Milt shuffled stiffly to the bathroom, and Russ pretended not to notice his gaping hospital gown. Milt's ass was, of course, perfect. Russ tongued the corner of his own mouth as he listened to Milt splash around. He heard the shower come on and tried to convince himself to leave, but he knew he wasn't going anywhere. Even if Milt wasn't ready to go back to work, and he probably was, the perfect fuck, they wouldn't keep him at the hospital another night. And he hadn't exactly driven himself in. And Russ knew that wasn't why he was staying either. Like Milt couldn't get a cab or call in a helo or something. 

Russ knew, he  _knew_ he had a protective streak. And he  _knew_ it wasn't supposed to work this way. But goddammit, Milt Chamberlain had _picked him_. And that wasn't supposed to happen either. That's why they hit each other so hard, like trains trying to merge onto the same track. In the natural order, someone like Milt came in and just obliterated the obsolete Russes of the world. He'd take over the department, make the city his bitch. But this one, this shiny kid who was falling down the government ladder like a star from the sky, picked out fuckin' Rusty Agnew and said, _nah man, hitch on_. Milt was determined to drag Russ on to the next evolution, kicking and screaming if he had to. Un-fucking-natural. And irresistable really. Cuz Milt was so goddamn bright, a guy couldn't really care which way he happened to be fallin'. Even if the bottom was there, he'd never see it coming. And that was really the best way to go. 

Milt looked surprised when he stuck his head out of the bathroom. "You're still here."

"Yeah," Russ said. He tossed Milt a bag. "I brought you some clothes."

Milt ducked away again. When he came back out, he was dressed in most of the undercover get up he'd used for the syrup case. Russ found he liked the ensemble better without the sweater. He missed the glasses though. They'd made Milt kind of, and there was that word again, adorable. Milt made the hospital bed and closed up the bag Russ had brought him.

"Lay down, Monaco," Russ said.

Milt raised an eyebrow at him. 

Russ stood and pointed at the bed. "Nurse said the doc is on his way. He'll talk to you and then they'll discharge you, but you know how long that shit takes. For the time being, lay the hell down."

"Are _you_ feeling all right?" Milt asked, though he sat on the edge of the bed. "You're always surly, but this... commandeering thing is a developing situation."

Russ flicked his fingers, and Milt stretched out with a sigh, lying back on the bed. Russ waited until he was settled before coming to sit next to him, right on the mattress, pressed against the outside of Milt's hip on the narrow bed. Milt blinked then put his hands down as if he meant to scoot over and give Russ a little more room to sit. Russ leaned across him though, setting his hand on the mattress on Milt's opposite side, looming over him so he could look the younger man in the eye. 

Milt's eyes widened. His breath caught. His lips parted. Russ felt his own heart rate pick up. 

"Nah, man. I'm not all right," he said, low and close. "You kind of make me insane." 

Milt dropped his gaze, looked down and away, so his ridiculous lashes shielded his eyes. Russ stayed where he was and watched the shadows of them against Milt's cheeks. He liked being this close. He could feel Milt breathing, and it was reassuring. He wanted to reach up and touch Milt's face, run his thumb across the edge of his cheekbone, but they hadn't even started talking about this yet. So Russ just tilted his head a little, hovered close and still. 

Milt's mouth curved, before he raised his eyes. Russ saw the smile and felt himself smile in return. When Milt looked up at him, it was from under the eyelashes, with some of the heat from the night before. Russ's heart tripped over itself leaping forward. His hand was steady though when he stroked his fingers along the line of Milt's jaw, down the column of his throat, leaned down close enough to drink in the tiny gasp Milt let out. 

"Still feeling it?" Russ asked, eyes narrow and serious. 

"Only thing I feel is you," Milt said, breathless again.

Russ grit his teeth. God, he was so perfect. Russ brought his hand to his jaw again, stroked his thumb across Milt's lips, and then gently tugged his mouth open so it was ready when he leaned down. One of Milt's hands was on his chest, the other was clutching at his hip, and Russ just cupped Milt's jaw, massaging their mouths together, slow and thorough, something the FBI agent should appreciate. The hand on Russ's chest sneaked up, over his shoulder and around the back of his neck. Milt's fingers scratched through the hair on the back of Russ's head. Russ pressed into Milt a little harder, licking at his mouth, and Milt gasped, letting Russ in. Russ made a noise, a little _devouring_ noise, splayed his hand over Milt's jaw and forced his head back, dove into his mouth. He barely stopped himself from crawling into Milt's lap.

But he did. He pulled back with a bitten off sigh and Milt chasing his lips. When he couldn't reach him, Milt opened his eyes. They stared at each other for long, heaving moments.

Then Russ said, "Good Christ, Monaco." 

And Milt smiled.


End file.
